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3 thoughts on “Human error and computer error”

As a grad student, I experienced a bit-flip once on a computer with a BASIC interpreter in ROM. It powered up one day with the values of true and false reversed, which did not do wonders for flow control in my program. I documented it by printing statements like”7<5" (true), then cycled power off and back on, after which my program ran fine.

In ROM? Oh dear. Presumably it loaded the interpreter into RAM for use or similar.
I wonder are there other sorts of computer errors that are not human errors? I could not think of any other than this sort of bit garbling.

Back when RS232C ruled PC ports, I encountered situations where, immediately after power-up of both PC and printer, a printer simply could not talk to the PC. Powering down and back up usually cured it. It seemed that a transient voltage was screwing up something, but I couldn’t tell whether it was a bit flip or a lingering electrical charge causing a false signal on one of the pins.